Pearls
by MLP
Summary: This is set during Christmas break, freshman year at Hearst. All roads lead to Aspen.


Pearls

Sometimes it really pissed him off.

In fact, sometimes he got so damned mad he just had to hit something and that usually turned out to be some_one._

"You're so lucky! You could have any (fill in the blank) in the world!"

People had been saying that to Logan Echolls his entire life and by the time he was twelve, he'd realized it was always followed by them telling him why he couldn't have what he wanted.

People looked and all they saw was the fame, fortune and glamour. Not his, of course. His parents'. He was nothing but the pale reflection of the glory that was them. He was the son of privilege and beauty: the _luckiest kid in the world._

His Mom was a world famous beauty. Well into her forties, she had cast girls half her age into the shade. His friends lived for the moments she appeared poolside in her bikini. He hated it. It enraged him to see his horny friends drool over his _Mom. _He had come very close to knocking the lascivious grins off their stupid faces on more than one occasion. She spent more time in the gym than she ever spent watching him do anything. She worried more about her wardrobe, hair and makeup than she ever did about his grades. He thought her collagen injections made her look ridiculous but no one ever asked his opinion. No one ever asked him if he'd like to have a world famous beauty for a mom.

Maybe a fat mother would have been brave enough to speak up when her son was being knocked senseless. He would have preferred an ugly mother who wouldn't abandon him to the sole custody of his abuser. He would have been happy with a hairless crone of a mother who didn't think throwing herself off a bridge was easier than standing up for him. No one ever asked him what he wanted.

"You could have anything you want in the whole world!"

Then of course there was his Dad.

His rich, famous, handsome, Oscar winning father.

Psychotic, narcissistic and homicidally violent never quite made it into the bio.

"You can meet any movie star in the world!"

True, he had a father who ws capable of inviting his ten year old crush to his birthday party. Would have been nice if Aaron had bothered to tell the actress that his _son's _name was 'Logan', not 'Lauren' and so avoided what became one of the most humiliating events in Logan's young life.

He had stopped wondering years ago what it would be like to be able to hang out with his Dad without having to worry what word or move would set him off and result in a cut lip, bloody nose or worse. By puberty he had recognized that playing the game of 'how to avoid pissing of Dad' was unwinnable and started playing 'how much can I get away with before he blows?' At least he had a lot more fun before the inevitable. Turns out he had a natural talent for being a smart ass.

He had long ago given up trying to tell anyone the truth about his Dad. They were always too enthralled with the legend of Aaron Echolls to hear a word he said, cried or screamed. He used to think he'd prefer to live in middle class anonymity if he could just have a Dad who never hit him. It was the violence that ruined everything but now he thought he could've put up with the violence if only he could've had a Dad who didn't think it was cool to plow his son's girlfriend.

Ah yes, his girlfriend.

His first love.

Lilly.

What a gal.

"You could date any girl in the world!"

She had constantly accused him of being jealous and she was right. He _was _jealous. He knew how guys looked at Lilly, how they thought of Lilly, how they _talked _about her. He knew because he had done all of those things himself before he had caught her looking at him at the pool that day...

He had been in ninth grade.

He could have any girl in the world and Lilly was the most exciting, beautiful, sexy girl he'd ever seen. All he wanted was that she love him the way he loved her but that was too much to ask. Lilly had always been annoyed and angry with his jealousy, all the while giving him plenty to be jealous about. Apparently, Lilly's second greatest pleasure was making a fool of him. Logan had seen the tapes. Aaron hadn't had to work too hard to get Lilly into that bed.

Logan had gladly given up his virginity to Lilly but she had stolen more from him than anyone has a right to take. He had loved her as much as his fifteen year old self had been capable but now he thought it might have been nice to have a first love who wasn't _quite _so exciting.

"You could be friends with anyone in the world!"

For over ten years, he'd thought he had the greatest best friend possible. He and Duncan had been tight since kindergarten. They had spent their vacations together, hanging out every chance they got, surfing as often as possible. Everything about Duncan had been a boon to Logan. He was smart, funny, fun to be around, his parents were intelligent, accessible and welcoming; they were connected to a far better class of people than his own glamorous parents were and then there was Duncan's sister...

Logan would have traded his own family for the Kane's the first chance he got. No one can say he didn't try. Yep, for awhile there, Logan _at least _had a great circle of friends.

When Lilly died it all came apart at the seams. Duncan withdrew into himself completely for awhile. Sweet little Veronica turned on them and sided with her Dad, who did everything in his power to destroy the Kane family completely, even after getting thrown out of the Sheriff's office. Logan understood Duncan's reaction to Lilly's murder but Veronica's betrayal bewildered and infuriated him. By choosing to side with her Dad, she not only turned her back on the Kanes, she had turned her back on _him._ He spent the next year and a half poking, prodding and attacking her, trying to understand how she could do it and why.

He spent so much time trying to antagonize some answers out of Veronica that he didn't see Duncan drifting away until the day he needed his friend, only to find him gone. It had pissed him off that Duncan had assumed he would steal a poker stake from that punk, Weevil, much less his friends. It had been a knife in the heart that when Logan had been accused of killing Felix, Duncan was nowhere to be found.

The irony of it all was that at his darkest, lowest moments, it had been not Duncan but Veronica who had come to his rescue. Veronica, whom he hated and should have hated him, who _did hate him, _had been the one to hold him when he broke down over the loss of his Mom.

Lynne may have been weak, superficial and selfish but she was his Mom and he loved her. She should have known he needed her. He wasn't sure which had hurt more; realizing that she was gone or that she had left him behind. Veronica understood that and so while he thought he should have been deeply embarrassed to have fallen apart in front of her, all he felt was grateful that she had been there.

In fact, he's pretty sure that was the moment he fell in love with Veronica. He hadn't realized he was in love with her until she kissed him at the Camelot but when she did, it hit him like a rip tide and he realized he wanted to kiss her more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life.

So he did.

He fell for Veronica so hard that the bounce was higher than anything he'd ever felt for Lilly.

He should have remembered it's the fall that kills you.

"You could have any girl in the world!"

But you're not supposed to want your best friend's ex, even if he did dump her well over a year earlier. That's a total violation of the bro code and Logan knew it. But Duncan had left, disappeared without so much as an 'adios', leaving Logan and Veronica to deal with the aftermath of Lilly's murder. He shouldn't have been surprised at what happened.

Anyway, it's not like Veronica wasted much time giving Logan the boot and running back to Duncan. Logan was pretty sure she left scorch marks on him.

Sick of losing everything, Logan had actually beaten some sense back into Duncan's head. That was the upside. The downside was that Logan had to endure a front row seat to the Duncan and Veronica show.

"You could have any girl you want!"

Logan hadn't wanted Kendall. Well, yes, in a physiological sense he certainly had but only because he couldn't have Veronica and he had to do _something _to prevent himself from going right through the wall and strangling them both. Kendall had the added attraction of being an outrageous conquest. It appealed to Logan's sense of audacity that he had stolen Big Dick's trophy wife right off the shelf. Veronica had accused him of having a death wish.

Well, what's so great about living?

Anyway, she was one to talk. Logan was actually grateful for his education in violence that day at the River Styx. he knew that he had done the right thing to get her out of there, even if she hadn't. Even if she had blamed him _again _for what he did.

Left to his own devices, Logan had found a way out of his legal troubles. At first he had only meant to use Hannah to manipulate her lying sack of shit, drug addicted quack of a sire to drop his false allegations. But Hannah had been sweet and pretty and kind. It had been so _great _to have someone look at him and actually _see him _and not 'Aaron Echolls' son' or the school psycho that he had been unable to resist her.

"You can have any girl in the world!"

Sure. Until her parents ship her out of state to an undisclosed location. Then you're on your own again, kid.

Then Duncan was gone. Again. And again, without so much as a so long, it's been swell, have a nice life, I'll miss ya, goodbye, good luck, I'll most likely kill you in the morning, _nothing. _As though Logan had meant _nothing _in Duncan's life at all.

Thanks, buddy.

I'll miss you, too.

It's really not surprising that Logan spent the last two years of high school in a self medicated, tequila fog.

Veronica was the light that lead him out of it. He never would have had the courage, sober, to say the things he apparently said to her at Alterna-prom. It was the look on her face the next morning, when Kendall appeared at the door that had shocked Logan out of it.

No one seemed to notice, not even Veronica, that he hadn't drunk himself into a stupor in months. He hadn't even been tempted.

After that horror show on the roof, it seemed like his luck was finally changing; that after being told his entire life he could have whatever he wanted, he might actually get it. In fact, he did get it. He had it.

Veronica was every girl-the only girl-he had ever really wanted and for a few months, she was his. At least, he thought she was. He loved her with everything he had and for a little while he thought she felt the same way.

He was happier than he had imagined he could be.

And then he wasn't.

"You can have any girl you want!"

But when he got her, all she did was make him feel bad. She didn't trust him and every move he made was a disappointment to her. His opinion and peace of mind meant nothing to her. His fear bothered her not one bit. She obviously didn't want or appreciate his interference in her life. When he told her he loved her, she made it pretty clear that she didn't even like him very much.

When she froze him out, he realized that only being allowed to observe, rather than participate in her life was a kind of death.

So he left her.

It was the hardest thing he'd ever done and doing so gave him an understanding that maybe going off the bridge hadn't been an easy thing for his Mom to do: maybe it had seemed like the only way any part of her could survive. The irony of it is what he finally understood.

And that's how he wound up here in Aspen, bombed out of his mind at Christmas.

"You can spend the Holidays anywhere in the world!"

He wanted more than anything to be at home, with the people that he loved. But he hadn't been invited.

He sat at the bar, staring half blind at some girl who called him by his name, which was a huge step up from that surfer chick. He swore to himself that if anyone ever called him 'Aaron Echolls' son' to his face again, he would feed them their own teeth. He blinked his eyes, trying to focus on the blurry vision in front of him. Plenty of people who didn't know him at all knew his name but her voice sounded familiar. He _knew _she was someone he knew. She was someone.

So when she invited him upstairs, he followed her.

"You can have any girl in the world."

The world is his oyster, all right.

But he's allergic to shellfish.


End file.
